The purpose of the class is to learn about early single quire structures, understand their importance to the early history of the codex, and touch on the use of such structures up to the present.The class will make a small replica binding of one of the Nag Hammadi Codices, which date from the 4thcentury C.E., using a variety of materials, including paper, leather and papyrus.The class will study the history of the find and learn about the structural variations among the 10 most intact extant covers.Leather paring skills are not necessary.Time permitting, participants will also make a sampler of the variety of tie and wrapping band attachment systems used on the Nag Hammadi codices.Images of eleven covers and models of several of the extant 11 covers will be available for examination.Handouts will include a reading list and other information on the Nag Hammadi bindings.

Julia Miller is now a book conservator in private practice after being a senior conservator on the staff of the University of Michigan conservation lab for ten years.Her focus has shifted from bench conservation to researching and teaching models of historical bindings.For several years she has volunteered her time to describe historical binding structures for two rare book collections at the University of Michigan. She has taught the Nag Hammadi workshop many times, including at the Paper and Book Intensive (2006), the Montefiascone School in Italy (2007), the University of the Arts (2008), and the Delaware and NY Chapters of GBW.She has traveled to Egypt twice in order to study the original covers of the NHC and to work on a conservation survey at the Coptic Museum, Cairo.She received aconservation publication fellowship from the Kress Foundation and FAIC in 2008 and has completed her handbook on identifying and describing historical bindings, to be published by The Legacy Press in November, 2010.Julia has received a fellowship at The Library Company to study and develop a typology of American scaleboard bindings based on examples in the collection.